1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to an apparatus and method for playing an optical disc, and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for playing a multiple-layer optical disc, which can control movement of a pick-up module relative to the respective layers when reproducing data recorded on the optical disc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical discs, such as compact discs (CD), digital versatile discs, blue-ray discs (BD), high definition DVDs (HD-DVD) etc., are widely used for storing a large amount of data, and have a thin disc shape. The optical disc comprises a layer for recording the data, which has a reflective plane to allow video data, sound data, and text data to be recorded on the layer via combination of pits formed on the reflective plane of the layer.
Such an optical disc can be classified into a single layer optical disc which has a single layer formed therein, and a multiple-layer optical disc which has two or more layers formed therein. The multiple-layer optical disc comprises two or more layers overlapped with each other on a single optical disc to enlarge the recording capability of the optical disc. Currently, a dual layer optical disc comprising two layers is very widely used as one of the multiple-layer optical discs, and can be classified into a single-side dual layer optical disc and a double-side dual layer optical disc. In the single-side dual layer optical disc, both layers have reflective planes oriented in one direction, and a laser is irradiated only to one side of the optical disc. On the other hand, in the double-side dual layer optical disc, the reflective planes of the respective layers are oriented in different directions from each other, and a laser is irradiated to both sides of the optical disc.
When playing the multiple-layer optical disc, a layer jump must be performed for continuous reading of data in such a way that a pick-up module is moved relative to another layer immediately after reading data recorded on one of the layers.
Accordingly, when smoothly reproducing the data, in particular, video data or sound data, it is necessary to allow the layer jump to be rapidly performed while preventing reproduction of the video data or sound data from being cut off upon the layer jump.